Global leadership meet set to start

A global meeting for designing the post-2015 development goals will begin in Dhaka on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will inaugurate the two-day ‘Global Leadership Meeting for Population Dynamics’ meeting where representatives of 51 countries including ministers will attend.

Briefing journalists on the eve of the meeting Foreign Minister Dipu Moni on Monday said it would be a part of the 50 global consultative meetings that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had earlier planned to hold with nine agreed themes.

“Population Dynamics is one of these agreed themes,” she said.

She added that the conference would have ‘a deeper look’ on issues that can be included in the post-2015 development agenda.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted in 2000 will expire in 2015.

It was agreed at the Rio+20 meeting in June last year that a new set of goals under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the next cycle will begin after 2015.

Apart from addressing poverty eradication, health, education, women empowerment, the new goals will look at areas like food security, energy security, nutrition and management of water resources.

The Foreign Minister said the meeting would also adopt a ‘Dhaka Declaration’ to record the commitment of the global leaders.

She said the MDGs provided a global benchmark to address some of the ‘critical and contemporary developmental challenges’.

“The MDGs were action-oriented and measurable. The developing countries then moved – nationally, regionally and globally – to realise those goals,’” she said.

Dipu Moni said it was such a giant global meeting that holding jointly with Switzerland, “Bangladesh will be benefited internationally”.

She said population, urbanisation and nutrition were some challenges that Bangladesh is currently facing.

“We will get opportunity to focus on those issues during the meeting,” she said.